The tectonic plates start to shift for Albert Bore

Minutes after Sir Albert Bore’s re-election as leader of Birmingham council’s Labour group, and effectively as council leader, a salvo of social media exchanges broke out signalling a new modern method of political warfare.

A supporter of challenger John Clancy took to Twitter to announce ‘one third of Labour group vote against Albert Bore as leader’. That was followed, predictably, by a tweet from the other side announcing that ‘two thirds of Labour councillors back Sir Albert Bore’.

In another exchange of accusations, Sir Albert was described as a ‘dead duck leader’, which of course resulted in various tweets insisting that the Bore leadership was as strong as ever and the 23 votes picked up by Clancy against the 51 for The Great Man was an irritation and nothing more.

We can put down a marker that this was the first council leadership election to be fought to a great extent through social media, certainly on the Clancy side. Policy pronouncements and a manifesto were given substantial airings via Twitter and Facebook and much use was made of email.

Sir Albert, oddly, does not dirty his hands with social media but gets people to do that sort of thing for him. In any case, the speed at which political ideas can be disseminated in leadership elections is beginning to have an impact here in Birmingham, and in other cities.